July 25, 2013

You nights of anguish. Why didn't I kneel more deeply to accept you? Inconsolable sisters, and, surrending, lose myself in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain. How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration to see if they have an end. Though they are really seasons of us, our winter..... - Rainer Rilke

The dogs laid in the tall grass, munching on what are presumably old deer bones. They thoroughly relish visits to these hay fields but of late, I have no desire to bring them. I have little desire for anything. But my wife's dog, AKA my new Hiking Partnerdemands it. The dog will growl at me until I take her. And their vehicle of transport across hay fields? Why a jeep, of course. My son's jeep. Mixed emotions every time I drive it. Very mixed.
But here we are - me sitting in the jeep and the dogs crunching contentedly. The setting sun and breeze remind me that at this time of year, my son and I should be in Colorado backpacking. I am hit with a clenched stomach and sobs of pain. This is not crying. NO. Crying follows emotional pain, there is an order. This is soul destroying anguish where physical pain is caused from the wailing. I cannot catch my breath as my diaphragm contracts tremulously. I can no longer move air through my oral passages as I clench my jaw with fierce yet impotent anger. No more, please, I cannot bear it. I no longer know to whom or what I am pleading but there is no answer as the pain only intensifies. I cannot kneel anymore deeply than this.

July 22, 2013

July 19, 2013

We think we get over things. We don’t get over things.Or say, we get over the measles but not a broken heart. We need to make that distinction. The things that become part of our experience Never become less a part of our experience. How can I say it?

The way to get over a life is to die, Short of that, you move with it, let the pain be pain, not in the hope that it will vanish but in the faith that it will fit in, find its place in the shape of things, and be then not any less pain but true to form. Because anything natural has an inherent shape and will flow towards it. And a life is as natural as a leaf. That’s what we’re looking for: not the end of a thing but the shape of it.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life without obliterating, getting over a single instant of it.

July 17, 2013

July 12, 2013

My advisor who has steered me through school in the midst of my brother and father, has strongly urged me to take a leave of absence to keep myself together through the next disaster. Perhaps "strongly" isn't sufficient. Adamant, compelling, resolutely. But also sagaciously, compassionately, wisely. After adding up all the things facing me, both personally and from school, it suddenly became clear to me that she was right. To borrow a line from Yeats, my center cannot hold. So I'm taking a leave of absence from school. I view it as a necessary evil, rather than a path I wish to choose. In fact, it pains me greatly to follow this course. But the other options left me on a path towards burning out, or worse. As my own words are not flowing adequately to encompass my emotional and psychic totality, I look to literary giants who are far better able at bringing to life such feelings with their gift of words. If you've never read Rilke before, I highly recommend him.

It
seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel
as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because
we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because
everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because
we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

That
is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has
been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is
no longer even there, – is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what
it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we
have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes.We can’t say who has
come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future
enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

And
that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:
because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps
into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of
time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more
patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new
presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes
our fate.